Gwern Branwen

Sometimes I might have like an extra thought that I need to go in and add or make a comment that I realized was important.

After that, I often shamelessly just go to Twitter or my RSS feed and just read a large amount until maybe I get distracted by some comment or question from someone.

And then do some writing on that.

Somewhere, you know, usually in the evening, I often just get exhausted and try to go and do a real project or make a real contribution to something.

I'll actually sit down and work on whatever I'm supposed to have been working on that day.

Uh, and then, and then I go to the gym.

Um, by that point, I'm pretty burned out from everything.

Um, yes, you know, I, I like going to the gym, not because of any kind of meathead or athlete or even really enjoy weightlifting.

Um, but just because I think it's, it's the thing I can do that's the most opposite from sitting in front of my computer reading.

Yeah.

This is your theory of burnout, right?

That you just got to do the opposite of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, the problem, I think, when people experience burnout is that you just feel kind of a lack of reward for what you're doing or what you're working on.

You just need to do something completely different, something as different as possible.

Maybe you could do better than weightlifting.

But for me, you know, it does feel very different from anything that I do in front of a computer.

I would say it's more the latter one.

I think all the minor low-level additions and pruning and fixing I do is really not that important.